Tick-Tocking Lament
by x Cliched Oxymoron x
Summary: It saddens me, this duty I must fulfill. I wish I could spare a few. It's taken me several millennia to create my own type of blindfold, a metaphorical one which doesn't allow me to see all the damage I cause as I slowly course through people. Yet there are holes in that blindfold. Sometimes there is a lucidity to my madness. One-shot, Time POV about Alice & Tarrant's relationship.


**DISCLAIMER:** The characters present in this story do not belong to me. They are the intellectual property of Linda Woolverton, Tim Burton, Lewis Carroll, Disney, and all other associates. I gain no monetary profit from this story. It serves as entertainment only.

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES:** Heyo guys! This is a pretty little one-shot I had abandoned for a _long_ time and finally came back to tonight. It's Time POV, and basically all you need to know is that it is way in the future, and features Married!Hattice. I have a few thoughts about how that wedding would go. Interested in a fic about anything mentioned in this story? Let me know in the comments! Well, anyway, read, review, and enjoy.

Also, yes, I am working on _My Week With Alice_ and _Helen Through the Looking Glass._ This is a little filler in between XD

* * *

My black boots make small sounds as I step on the obsidian floor of my eternal palace. They resemble the ticking of a clock. I am making my way to the Doors, as is my custom and part of my role as Keeper of Time. My tin servants mind their business as they care for the Grand Clock, as I feel in my mechanical veins the me of two people start to wear rather thin.

I don't need to guide my feet to my destination, for I have taken this pilgrimage in more occasions than I am proud to admit. As such I let my mind wander. My hand travels to a pocket in my ebony cloak and caresses the one gift I've ever gotten. The smooth silver cover of the watch feels cool to my touch, and with it various memories of its original owner come to mind, making my steps ever so heavier and full of sorrow.

The curious kindergartner and the mad hatter have always been a sight to behold when apart, and more so together - which I am thankful for because an immortal life can get quite tedious after the first century, to be completely honest. She is bold and reckless and like everyone down here mad, never lowering or compromising her standards and morals for anyone or anything. He, in turn, is noble and selfless and bonkers as well, wearing his heart on his sleeve and willing to risk everything to the extent of his own life for the well-being and happiness of others. Together, this lunatic duo is peculiarly sane, and very joyful, too - something I hadn't ever seen in my various millennia of staring at Underland soar, fall, burn, and rise like a phoenix in an interminable loop. _How great both are_ , I think wistfully. _Though at first they were an extreme nuisance._

I bump against a wall, efficiently albeit accidentally waking me up from my thoughts, having gone slightly to the right through the me-shaped halls towards the Doors, where I will face an enormous challenge.

It saddens me, this duty I must fulfill. I wish I could spare a few. It's taken me several millennia to create my own type of blindfold, a metaphorical one which doesn't allow me to see all the damage I cause as I slowly course through people, those ungrateful and insolent fools. Yet there are holes in that blindfold. Sometimes there is a lucidity to my madness, which shows me the death I bestow on innocent souls with a simple hand movement. I swear I can hear the ticking of their clocks although I'm far from where they're stored. As I walk, they are begging for more me, for mercy. They know I can't give it to them - it is divine law - yet they still ask. They always ask.

I diligently stride to the Doors, the souls of those I've ended lurking in the shadows caused by my figure, begging as only they know how. Just when I am inclined to run from them, when I feel any second they'll become three-dimensional and swallow me whole, I reach the lighted hall that eradicates them. I enter the heavenly corridor denominated Underlandians Living.

As I walk into the warm light of the brightly colored room, contrasting with the darkness of my attire, my boots still make the irking clock-like noises, but that sound is muffled by the choir instrumental around. Surrounding me from every corner without order are ticking watches, laughing and living and conversing between themselves. Eventually, when I finally reach the very edge of the platform, I summon two watches - two lives - to my hand. Soon enough, both come together, their strings entwined. I expected that. Soulmates always come together. With the care of a mother holding her child, I take silently the two and try to separate them. They won't budge. I sigh at them, annoyed, before eventually deciding to just do the deed at the same me. What's the difference, at the end of the day?

"My dearest friends," I announce grandly. I have no idea how many times I've recited this same speech, to thousands of others. Yet my voice sounds thick this time. Foreign. "Your Time is up."

The fingers of the watches move in a nauseating crawl when I look at them against my will, both slow with age, before I close their lids simultaneously with a push of my hands. Their silver, intricate surfaces which used to be warm to the touch turn to a block of ice almost immediately after I close them.

 _I am numb to this_ , I repeat to myself as encouragement. I convince myself I'm talking about the cold, instead of their deaths.

 _I've done this to countless others without a thought. Why does it hurt now?_

Through with the arduous task of ending two lives for the moment being, I make a sharp turn and start my way out. Maybe, maybe I could carry these two soldiers in my pockets for a while. Just a moment longer, before I lay them to rest. I feel a strong urge to do so, but my routine dictates otherwise. I still am not done with the process, exactly, and it would be an insult to the people in my hand to leave them undone.

The bright light of life slowly melts back to the usual lighting of my castle as I walk through the small amount of corridor between both Doors. The light is completely consumed by a cold darkness upon my entrance into the chamber baptized Underlandians Deceased. There's no choir, not even ticking noises from my boots. Just eternal and suffocating quiet. It is peaceful, but it is also unnerving, frightening, unknown in a land as full of color and song such as Underland - in its glory days, of course, when King Olmeron ruled and there was no competition between queens for a crown.

I mix perfectly into the somber and solemn background.

All chains rest idly in neat columns like tombstones in a graveyard, most empty. I walk first to the letter H, a strict alphabetical organization code implemented, where there are several filled rows. There is one empty chain in a set nearly filled with silent clocks, which I plan to complete with one of two in my hand. Carefully, very much so, I slowly break the link of the watches until I grasp them each on separate hands. I tighten my grip on the one which goes under H, my finger tracing the cover with the name accidentally. Suddenly, at first surprising until I realize my amateur mistake, I can't see the silent tombs and silver watches, can't hear the distant chimes of the Grand Clock. I am in a vacuum, a void, until I find myself in a me long gone, transported to the person's last recalled memory before death.

* * *

 _It's warm, awfully warm, and the Sun is much too bright. My eyes are closed. I feel sweat tickling the edges of my scalp, but I still sip slowly the unbearably warm liquid in my flower teacup. The back of the forest-green chair I sit on is soft, although I can feel a spring somewhere near where my ginger locks lie. I am waiting, as I always end up doing, although I am not quite sure for what anymore. It's been so long. A broken tune plays in the air from the phonograph near me, and my hat covers my face partially, providing some cooling shade. If it weren't for that fact, I would most likely try and lift it back to place, but I find myself much too pensive and much too tired to do so. I am very pensive and tired nowadays._

 _I am alone, sitting in a desolate clearing, only a ramshackle windmill behind me. I don't know why it feels so foreign to my tongue and wrong to my head, the concept of being alone. Specially here. I've been so before. Of course I have. Particularly when my family was abducted by the Bloody Big Head many years ago. I have also been lonely. But I realize that this is the very first time I've felt both simultaneously. There isn't a mouse sitting in one of the chipped cups, a hare arranging spoons, a cat evaporating and doing goodness knows what else. Just me, sipping the tea I persist to drink in the hottest day of the year - of Underland's history, even. No one is mad enough to be outside in this heinous weather, much less drink hot liquid and wear several layers of clothes. Everyone except me, it seems._

 _I hear faint footsteps and know that Dream finally approaches me as I have been wanting him to do with much dread. Funny, the oxymoron in that thought. I wish for him to whisk me off to his Palace, where I can be with my beloved from another world again, if only for a vignette. But I also hate it when he puts me through such torture, of seeing her, but never being able to hold her in my arms, and waking up to a drab world stripped of its wonder where she is not there and may never be again. All Dream can provide to relieve my anguish is a spectre. A ghost. A sliver._

 _Of course, it's not ideal, but it's better than nothing._

 _He comes steadily towards me. I know that he is conscious of the fact that his visits bring me such delightful pain. I feel sleep wash over me as my head lolls forward. I'll accept the bittersweet agony if it means seeing her, in her brilliant blue self, every time. So I greet my old friend, the devil I've sold my soul to, with a small smile, waiting for him to take me by the hand to her as is our routine. Instead, I only receive quiet, but one that seems to be filled by something else. Whispers._

 _My ears tell me the sound comes from somewhere directly across from me, although I find it highly unlikely. No one is there to do that sort of sound, or anything at all. Only me and the phonograph, playing a broken tune for a broken soul._

 _Dream starts to fade, which irritates me because it means I won't be able to see her until later, until night. Angrily now, for having being deprived of my beloved, I raise my head and open my eyes. I'm momentarily blinded by the sudden brightness of the Sun. Involuntarily I close them, flinching away, and move slightly in my chair to straighten my position while I try and stop seeing white spots everywhere I turn. I place the cup of tea down, for the last thing I need is to spill it all over myself, and shake my head, hoping it clears my vision but realizing it just misplaces my top hat further. My hand - still with my eyes closed and seeing spots - reaches up and straightens it, mostly out of habit. Whoever has arrived is here for a reason, and I might as well look as presentable as a man who's lost the will to live can look._

" _Hatter!"_

 _My heart stops, if it was even beating to begin with. That voice, that melodious soprano, could only belong to one extraordinary being._

 _My emerald eyes start gaining focus, showing me only a blur. In other circumstances I would probably be extremely annoyed at the fact that I can't see, but her silhouette is so unique I recognize her immediately._

 _So very bright, so very blue, so very… well, her._

 _My eyes gain focus soon after, and only confirm my vision as I rise and my bow-tie straightens as her grin widens. That irking little thing called sense makes me wonder if the Champion's sudden appearance is Dream's work, if he has somehow transferred his Palace's power to the outside of Thackery's house, or if it is all a hallucination originating from my passing out because of the heat. In the rush of joy I elect to ignore it. She is here, in whichever way she may be, and that is all that matters to me. She stands, seeming to be measuring my reaction with that ridiculously cute look of hope in her face, and I can't help but grin as I move forward, both my hands on the table. I am not sure what I am doing - but then again I never really do - as I lift myself to the surface of the wooden table and crunch the already dilapidated porcelain as I start to stride towards her. It is the shortest route, after all. It doesn't surprise her. I guess I can't anymore._

 _She definitely can, though, and definitely does, when she joins me atop the table. The Champion of Underland, following my example, climbs carefully and unlike me does her best to avoid the tea cup set on the edge where a grinning cat usually sits, before she starts tiptoeing towards me. Excitedly, I continue to make my way carelessly towards her gleaming blue form, dressed in trousers and a navy waistcoat. Each step becomes lighter and more doubtful as we grow nearer, as I can't help but wonder if this is too good to be true. Her blonde locks rendered to a short bob, her bright periwinkle eyes, her wide grin wrapped by pink thin lips. She seems much too perfect, the quintessence of fantasy. She can't be real. But, then again, we all get to say which is which._

 _I choose reality when her arms wrap around mine and her lips are pressed against my right cheekbone. I feel the area brighten like a lit lamp, the heat growing with every second. The very fact that I can hold her is a testament that she is here, finally, after all those years of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. And the fact that she is so bold as to greet me with a kiss speaks volumes about her muchness, if you ask me._

" _Alice, my Alice," I whisper breathlessly as my hands start combing through her short hair. Her lips have since parted with my cheek and are now hovering above my neck, where her forehead burrows itself into the crook formed by my clavicle. I sigh in beautiful contentment, years lost struggling to escape from my lips except only in the shape of her name._

 _She tightens her grip on me, pulling herself closer until every inch of herself is pressed against me. Almost as if she feared that if she were any further away, she'd disappear. Like I was her anchor to Underland. I reciprocate, holding my arms behind her back. Through my coat I hear her whisper with a voice raw with emotion, but still strong as ever - "I'm home. I'll stay."_

* * *

I snap out of the vision and return to my eerie, lifeless Palace much more abruptly than I had left it. Alice's arms, or the ghosts of them, are still wrapped tightly around me. My cheek still burns. I never wanted, and never want to be again, within the Hatter's head - it is so disorganized and manic and it caused all the alien reactions across my body to the mere thought of the kindergartner. I must be rid of them. As I take a step back, they fade. But the stinging in my eyes remains. Without a second thought, I hang the watch reading _Tarrant Hightopp_ among the rest of his clan, just to ensure no more accidental contacts with the cover occur.

Sometimes, I don't understand my own powers. Why in Underland would I want to revisit the last memory of those gone? Just a brush of the front cover, a thumb across the name, and suddenly I'm transported to their psyche and experience the events as if I were them. I'm lucky the Hatter's elation lasted so little upon my person. There was a me, long ago, when a similar incident led me to the death of a little old lady who had revisited her first day of school before death. I had an acute fear of forgetting my pencil and was weighed down by the ghost of a heavy bag upon my back for what felt an eternity.

My eyes fall to the second watch in my hand. _Alice Kingsleigh._ When she had told the Hatter that she had come to stay, she had meant it. After an unnecessary five years of courtship, the ceremony of their wedding - the wedding of the century, if I recalled the headlines correctly - was held in the gardens of Marmoreal. She had renounced her Overlandian ties with a concoction of the Queen's, and become one with the magical land. Her wedding vows had brought tears even to Iracebeth's eyes. It should be noted that my largely-headed belle had snuck in at the last moment. She hadn't been invited.

For a moment, I considered how the two of them would want to be together in death. The thought often crossed my mind when it came to couples. But it vanished for them just as it did for everyone else. There was a strict alphabetical code. No exceptions.

So I made my way silently to the letter K, where _Karabel_ , _Kennenberg_ , and _Kieffman_ hung - but no _Kingsleighs_ , save for her. Buried among strangers. That was what she had chosen when she had chosen Underland. Chosen him.

As I latch the watch into its new hanging place, my hand hovers over the name. What had the great Champion of Underland, the kindergartner, thought right before the watch clicked close? What occured in that mysteriously foreign mind in its last moments?

 _Damn my curiosity_ , I thought as I pressed my finger gently against the letter A of her name. I shouted the thought louder in my head as the darkness took hold of me again, and a gentle summer breeze tugged like the fingers of a phantom across my chest.

* * *

" _What's the point of years of study to learn how to operate a ship if you never sail?" I quip back, the snark in my tone as prominent as the smile on my face as I fought for the hold of the helm from Tarrant's hands. I can't help but stare at his ring, a simple gold band, laced on the finger of the hand that is holding the wooden wheel. I can't help but stare at mine, a twin save for the emerald squarely in the middle, above it._

 _He huffs. He'd planned this honeymoon travel through the Red Sea as an opportunity to indulge me. As he'd put it - "have someone else do something in this godforsaken place except you every time." Tarrant had gone as far as taking lessons from the top sailors in Mirana's navy to learn the basics of maneuvering a ship. And I must say, he knew a lot for a month of study. Still, I feel more comfortably driving. It feels odd to have someone else do things for me I'm perfectly capable of doing. I was too used to needing to do it all by myself in order to prove to the world that I was worth a damn._

 _But with a small pout from my part, Tarrant relents. It's his soft spot. My mother had told me the most important thing to know about a man was his soft spot. As she'd put it - "it's a woman's secret weapon to win every argument." I was glad I had listened. He lets go of the wheel, and instead takes hold of my waist from behind me as I shift to be able to steer the ship. He rests his chin on my left shoulder, like the parakeets of pirates in the storybooks I read as a child. Though the illustrations did little justice to the beauty of the birds._

 _As I work my way through the quiet waves, I lean my head against his and sighed. For all my youth, I had dreamed of a marriage like my mother and father's - one riddled with silent looks speaking of things I didn't yet understand at that tender age, and stolen caresses under tables with bare feet. Then, in my adolescence, I had feared a marriage like my sister's - one that seemed staged in every way, where Margaret signed away her freedoms gladly only for the material pleasure of a man's greedy lips. But now that I myself, miraculously, am a married woman, I believe I had found a sound middle ground. There are quiet moments, like that instant that stretched into a thousand where he stands behind me, fitting to my form like a key in a lock, and the tenderness does all the speaking for us. And of course there are louder moments, like the wedding night that still tinges my ears pink and leaves ghost trails and echoes of possibly the greatest joy I have ever felt in my life. The joy of having greed fulfilled. I needed to sign my life Above away in exchange for those moments. I could never see my sister, my home, my ship, ever again. Occasionally, I wondered if it had been worth it._

 _Then I remember the agony of not having his weight upon me in some way, even if in a simple band, and realize the profound stupidity of that question. Of course it was._

" _Alice, my darling wife," he says, drawing me out of my thoughts. His words are contorted slightly due to the fact his chin is glued to my shoulder, and because of his lisp. He loves calling me 'wife' ever since he gained the right to. Honestly, I do the same, so I guess I can't judge. "You're so very deep in thought. Indulge me."_

 _I hum, noting through the corner of my gaze that the map indicates a turn starboard is ahead. My arms swiftly make it happen as I think of an answer. Though I had promised him every part of me, and he had promised me every part of him, we both knew there were things neither of us were privy to. "Where exactly you are leading me, husband."_

 _He clicks his tongue. "You are the one leading. Need I remind you, you're at the helm."_

" _Yes, but I'm following your map," I counter, a smile tangible in my voice. He chuckles._

" _Indeed you are. Just trust me, wife. If there is one thing I know, it is Underland."_

 _I decide to do just that, and simply follow the map. Though in any other context, that same sentence would have caused an intense desire to rebel to erupt within my ribcage, today I feel mellow. A breeze keeps the sun from being too harsh, toying with my trousers and my blouse. Tarrant is behind me, brushing my hair absentmindedly. His other hand rests comfortably between my waist and my hip. And I had found a way back to commanding a ship - even if The Dragon is nothing more than a sailboat. Everything is just right._

 _Eventually we come upon an island not drawn in the map, where a towel with a basket in the sand is visible even from beyond the sea. It is in a nice spot of shade, overlooking the ocean but not close enough to the receding current to splash or soak. I turn to Tarrant, who by that point had gone down to work on deck on other aspects of the ship. He probably feels my gaze on his, because he turns around and smiles like the fool he is. I can't believe the beautiful simplicity of it all. He hadn't planned the elaborate travels through Europe my mother had promised my dowry could afford. Nor the elegant ballrooms where parties would be thrown every night for a week in honor of the marriage. No, none of the ideas I had dreaded. Just a quiet day, the two of us alone, on a beach._

 _Oh, Tarrant knows me so well._

 _When we finish tying the ship to the little dock built on the west of the island, we walk hand in hand barefoot to the little picnic Tarrant had thrown together. There comes a point where I drag him into the tide, just where our whole foot is submerged in salty water before it disappears then comes again. The waves we had glided over are now cool like clouds, and I am sure for that very moment that the sky is within my reach and this is what flying feels like._

 _And then my darling husband splashes me, and I crash-land._

 _It had been a tiny splash that barely got above my knees, but it meant war. I kneel down and throw a handful at him before the tide recedes. The look of indignation on his face makes me bellow with laughter. He chases as much water as he can find, as do I, and we throw it at each other until his curls are damp and pasted to his face, and my shirt and trousers hang limply from my thin frame. And then before I know it we are on the towel, dripping and laughing and relishing upon our luck and our marital bliss._

 _We talk and talk until the sun has dried us and it sinks to give way to the night. Tarrant and I are lying on our backs - my whole body tucked in nicely into his form like spoons in a cabinet - counting the stars. That was something I always loved about Underland that England could never, in its wildest dreams and oldest days, provide: clear nights. Visible stars. Our hands are laced together above Tarrant's chest, rising and falling with his breathing. Our wedding bands are pressed against each other, but not uncomfortably. I can feel his heartbeat. I count it, along with the stars._

 _He is naming the different constellations, pointing them out with his free hand for me. At one point that day he'd revealed he'd taken me here because it was the clearest vantage point for the sky in all of Underland. It was his favorite place. And now, as he'd put it - "it is ours, if you want it to be."_

 _When he comes upon a mess of bright dots in the shape of a cloud, he pauses, turning to look at me. "That one there is very special. It is Alice."_

 _I blink, taken aback. I point toward myself, a silent question he understands within seconds._

" _Yes, lass, like you. After you defeated the Jabberwocky, I convinced Mirana to name her so. For you, I'd get the whole galaxy and tie it with a bow," he proclaims in a whisper, as soft as the thinning winds._

 _I chuckle, shifting closer to him - if that is even possible. "You're so cheesy, dearest husband."_

" _You do that to me, my darling wife."_

* * *

When I return to myself, I know immediately that it would stay with me. That utter bliss, and the silence where everything was said, and the feeling of clouds against my bare feet and the sky above me. I can't quite comprehend how one woman once carried such love and light in her, when she had killed a heinous beast, and she had almost killed me. And how she could feel - and I could feel, secondhand - all that radiant affect from the Hatter's part. Just... Sense it. It was odd, that love I'd enjoyed looking at from my Eternal Palace like a play, that only now did I understand much more intimately. There was a want - obviously. But also a need. The way they had fit together, in both memories. How much they had endured. In this very moment, I become acutely aware that I am miserable. Because all of that beauty and light and love had ended. Had ended so soon.

If after the Hatter's memory I'd come out with a tingling in my eyes, after Alice's I am crying. They're just a few tears, but that is impressive for a god.

Every once in a while, I forget I had a heart.

My black boots lead me away from the curious kindergartner and past her madman with no noise, until the constant ticking returns as I leave the Doors behind me. Every step worsens my grief. How could I have killed them, the two lovers who'd fought off fate to be together, but only for such a small me? Why did I have to kill them? Could I have done anything different?

I shake my head silently, my eyes glued to the obsidian. No, I know I couldn't have. And I killed them because it had been their me. The same fate that they had fought determined that they had lived what they had lived, and now they had to die. I had no other choice. I had only done my duty.

My duty that only fills me with this horrible, horrible, lament. Like clockwork.


End file.
